Ban male nursery workers?

[BluntPlumHam]

I came across this article which has left me quite sick.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze665j2y51o.amp

Said 18 year old was newly qualified nursery worker who’d SA’d and raped 3 year olds.

Nurseries are desperate for workers and I have noticed through friends and families that there is now an increasing number of men entering the profession.

Men traditionally haven’t performed this role and I often find it difficult to envisage what attracts a male to this profession to begin with when we have so many instances of men who run away from childcare responsibilities.

Although men entering the profession can be a positive outcome the other very concerning outcome and on the potential rise is this.

Sex offenders will target this profession no doubt as it gives them easy access to children.

men are significantly more likely than women to sexually assault children.
Official statistics consistently show that the vast majority of individuals convicted of, or reported for, child sexual abuse (CSA) are male. For example:

• In the year ending March 2019, the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that 92% of adults who reported experiencing CSA said the perpetrator was male only.
• In 2022/23, almost 99% of individuals convicted of child sexual abuse offences in the UK were men.
• Reports to the Australian Royal Commission by victims and survivors of institutional abuse revealed that 93.9% of the abuse was perpetrated by an adult man.

So just a blanket ban on them all together ?

It isn’t my personal opinion but I do think we ought to have measures in place to make nurseries more secure and safer. This thread is to invite discussion.

Also, kudos to those brave little 3 year olds who had the courage to tell their parents because they’ve saved a lot of potential victims in the future. My thoughts and wishes for a life time of healing for them and theirs.

Women may in theory be capable of sexually abusing children - "just like men" but in reality they are 50 times less likely to do so than men.

The male of the species is responsible for 98% of convictions of sexual assault. Let that sink in.

The women who make up 2% of the convictions are almost always hooked up with a male paedophile.

Any males of my acquaintance agree that men who want to look after other people's babies and toddlers trigger their alarm bells just as much as mine and none would be comfortable with an unrelated male bathing or changing their baby.

I can understand (not necessarily agree) people feeling that there might be some advantages to men working in childcare. I can also understand people saying it's unfair to the "good guys" to talk about a ban.

What I don't get is why you then end up with posters waxing lyrical about how the men involved in childcare are just the absolute best, so much better than the horrible women. It's like the women who claim to always get on better with men than women who they inevitably consider bitchy. So fucking messed up.

You do like blowing your own trumpet that's for sure.

No, it was my fault for posting such a personal experience. Bu thank you for your kind words.

I have been thinking about it. I cannot ask my parents about it as they are no longer alive but they were wonderful parents who trusted him. I remember that the Head had a secretary in the next office so it may well have been that she was there when he was looking after me. I certainly don't remember seeing her anywhere but in that office. He had an amazing reputation and there were loads of lovely comments on Facebook when he died about him being just a lovely man.

I spent time as a child in hospital, sometimes for weeks. Should my parents have left me alone there?

It's interesting that people have picked out from my story the bit they feel uncomfortable with (about the male Head) but have ignored the fact that it was a female teacher was very cruel to me.

Safeguarding is obviously a good thing and yes, I agree that no adult should be with a child alone. Male or female.

No reason exists for banning male nursery workers. Our children would miss out on so much and personally I would hate to live in a country that held such nasty, prejudiced views against men.

Any males of my acquaintance agree that men who want to look after other people's babies and toddlers trigger their alarm bells just as much as mine and none would be comfortable with an unrelated male bathing or changing their baby.

Yes, I asked my DH what he thought after reading this thread and he admitted that he would be uneasy about this too.

Please don't use Letby as an example. Her guilt is far from certain at the moment.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/19/conviction-the-case-of-lucy-letby-review-documentary-probes-britains-most-notorious-baby-killer&ved=2ahUKEwiimPXotf6QAxURUUEAHXadAEAQFnoECFkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw38F7CTY3rVjqqFnDpdaSYC

Men are falsely blamed for the actions of female criminals? Really, does that happen often?

The blindness is stunning.

Tbf some women who talk about women being bitchy like that may genuinely have only had bad experiences, or maybe at a very formative time like secondary school. I've similarly heard gay men say equivalent things about why they prefer only female friends (often after bad school bullying).

Whereas people who dismiss the disproportionate risk male nursery workers pose...whatever their personal experiences, the stats clearly show that male workers are responsible for most sexual assault. Yes, women could still commit mental/physical abuse (or much rarer, SA) but the risk of SA is MUCH lower.

I've read the serious case review for this. There's a lot of background involving this young man, who was a child himself when the offences occurred, and the nursery failed in their safeguarding duties at every step of the way, both to him and to the children in their care. (Please note I'm not excusing his actions in any way, they were horrific).
This isn't a reason for the many, many superb male childcare practitioners to be tarred with the same brush. More a reason for all child care settings to ensure they are following the current safeguarding and safe recruitment legislation to the letter.

Question:
How can a "good" nursery prevent a male employee from ever being on his own with a baby or toddler?

Answer:
They can't.

Also, nursery employment is low paid with few qualifications required and even fewer checks in place to weed out the known pedophiles let alone the majority who have never come to the attention of the police.

I don't doubt that there are many gullible owners who are more than happy to take on any Tom, Dick or Harry to virtue signal how progressive they are. They're the last people I would hand over a vulnerable child to.

We all know that pedophiles actively seek employment or recreational activities that give them unfettered access to children, so they will be always be over-represented in such jobs compared to the rest of society.

The real question is - what level of risk are parents willing to take when handing their child over to a nursery? Are they willing to increase the risk of sexual assault by 50 (more actually as pedophiles will flock to this type of work) so that their son has a male role model?

Another question:
Most men can earn a lot more money in male-dominated jobs requiring similar levels of education to nursery workers so why on earth would they apply for a lower paid job in the first place?

30 year old working-class men typically earn more than 30 year-old middle-class women with an Arts degree for example.

Last question:
How many men applying for nursery jobs would be willing to hand over their smartphone, laptop etc to the police for a forensic search for child porn as part of a risk reduction initiative? Or sign up to allowing police randomly check their devices for child porn, in order to minimize the risk?

No she did it, and far more no doubt. Face it, the most evil person in the country who has committed the most monstrous acts against children is a woman. Of course you wouldn't be saying "please don't use x as an example we don't know they're guilty" if it was a man though. Which just proves my point re the following-

Men are falsely blamed for the actions of female criminals? Really, does that happen often?

Well the men in the Letby case have been turned into the evil villains picking on a poor innocent female nurse, anything to deny the fact there even are female criminals in the first place. Must be a man's fault somewhere, Lucy couldn't have done it, scapegoat, misogyny blah blah.

How can you be so sure? The circumstances of the case are still extremely disputed even by medical experts.

Yes, I would be equally critical of using a male case as an example if it were as disputed as Letby's.

Yes, I know some people have argued she was influenced by a man. I think most critics of the case actually argue that the deaths were caused by the hospital's failings, not the actions of a man, however.

Finally, I strongly doubt that any but a mentally ill person or a tiny minority of extreme radicals would deny that women commit crime. Even those who argue that particular cases were coerced by male partners to commit evil acts still acknowledge that the women did commit criminal actions.

@Carla786 The circumstantial evidence is more than enough to believe she did it. For one babies were poisoned with insulin and I'm not about to tie myself in knots about why the test just so happened to be wrong only ever on the times that implicated her. Plus the police have sent off a whole new file of evidence including from the other hospital she worked at.

Yes, I know some people have argued she was influenced by a man. I think most critics of the case actually argue that the deaths were caused by the hospital's failings, not the actions of a man, however.

Actually individual doctors have been blamed for at least one of the deaths, as well as the claim they didn't make enough rounds. The lengths people will go to in an effort to try and make this woman somehow innocent are extraordinary.

A panel of the world's leading neo-natal specialists led by Dr Shoo Lee examined every medical file related to Lucy Letby's conviction and publicly announced months ago that in their expert opinion, not a single child was killed deliberately.

That holds a lot more weight for me than anything anyone else says.

They did not have to give themselves this task, Dr Shoo Lee became involved because some of his research had been incorrectly interpreted and used to support Letby's conviction and he could not accept this. He brought together a panel of the best neo-natalists in the Western World to dissect the medical file of each child. They did so individually and then debated any differences in groups before making their final assessment on each case.

In the case of one death, a doctor had injected medication into the wrong side of the child's body which would have contributed to the child's death.

Mainly the panel found that the level of care provided by this hospital was wholly inadequate and would in his opinion have caused a similar hospital in Canada to be closed down for health and safety reasons.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/04/lucy-letby-convictions-what-did-the-expert-panel-find

Men should be disabused of the notion of ever working in roles that require interaction with children and vulnerable women without question. That includes schools, hospitals, police and mental health services.

So the brilliant surgeon who saved my child's sight shouldn't have done it? So glad he did and all the other children he helped in a long career.

A woman could have easily done the same job and would have been far less of a safety concern.

Honestly, it sounds like you misogynists think we can’t get on with running the world without the poor menz having intimate access to our daughters. You have never been more wrong.

He was the top surgeon in his speciality in our region and highly regarded on a national level. My child could not have easily been operated on by an equivalent surgeon male or female. Total madness and thank God you didn't have the power to Rob my child of his sight.

Maybe have a look into Kuldeep Stohr if you think a surgeon is safe purely because they are a woman.

I wanted the best for my child and that's what he got.

And had the male candidates been disqualified from ever training to be surgeons, those positions would have been filled by women, at least 1 of which would have been of equal competency or better to that man. Your child’s sight would have been saved regardless, unless you somehow think we aren’t capable of curing sight? Is that what you are saying?

There were female surgeons, presumably they were better candidates than other men or women but he was the best. If you are gambling on your child's sight you don't let your prejudices get in the way.

That’s a daft argument. The top male surgeon isn’t going to be left on his own with the child, is he? He comes in and does the procedure, with other professionals assisting. He then leaves others to do the aftercare and moves on to the next patient.

That is true. I certainly wasn't going to risk my child's sight for such a ridiculous reason.

So no male teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers - thankfully such a stupid idea will never happen. My DH, a doctor is excellent with caring for women and children.

That’s bully for you, but most of us don’t want to be in a vulnerable position where we can be easily exploited by a male, whether he’s your ‘perfect’ husband or someone else.

I don’t trust men. We don’t trust men. They should realise that and stay away from these positions, like go work on an oil rig or something.